It’s one of those transparently absurd situations that governments and courts accidentally produce from time to time, not least in Ontario: under Section 5 of the Ontario Human Rights Code, people convicted of a criminal offence and later pardoned are protected from discrimination, notably in matters of employment — you can refuse to hire someone as a driver on grounds of past drunk driving offences, say, but (in theory at least) you can’t refuse to hire him as an accountant. But a landmark human rights tribunal ruling interpreted those protections not to apply to someone who is charged and acquitted of an offence, or merely investigated, or indeed has any other recorded contact with police on his record that a potential employer might ask or find out about.

In other words, in terms of getting a job, you’re legally better off convicted and pardoned than falsely suspected or accused. It’s asinine, and easily fixed — or so one might think. Yet that tribunal case was way back in 2009. The Toronto Star reported extensively on it in 2014, and the next year the government restricted the sorts of things that can wind up on your police background check. But the central absurdity remained, and there are more ways than ever for potential employers to investigate your past. Only now might it finally be rectified.

A private member’s bill from Liberal MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers, formerly general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, passed second reading in the Legislature on Thursday. It would add “immigration status, genetic characteristics, police records and social condition as prohibited grounds of discrimination” — with “police records” defined as “includ(ing) charges and convictions, with or without a record suspension, and any police records, including records of a person’s contact with police.” (“Record suspensions” are basically what the feds now call pardons.)

“There is still this very perverse ruling that’s still on the books,” says Des Rosiers. “You could be discriminated against in employment situations because you had a charge that was withdrawn … or you were found not guilty. That was completely weird.”

n terms of getting a job, you’re legally better off convicted and pardoned than falsely suspected or accused

If the bill passes, she expects the Human Rights Commission to update its guidance on the matter, and provide employers with directions on how to determine whether someone’s criminal past is “relevant to the scope of employment.” Obviously convicted child molesters won’t be getting hired as daycare workers, or any other nightmare scenarios. But as it stands, she says, citing a report from British Columbia’s Privacy Commissioner, we are effectively “preventing people from reentering the workforce completely.”

That’s obviously not desirable, and the Conservatives and New Democrats have thus far supported the bill. But when the bill hits committee, I suspect an interesting philosophical discussion about rights might ensue.

The least controversial human-rights protections concern immutable human characteristics: gender, ethnicity, skin colour; as sexual orientation and gender identity have become more widely thought of as immutable, they have been added to the list. However much someone’s early life circumstances might put him at risk of becoming a criminal, it still involves an active choice to commit the crime. Des Rosiers now proposes to eliminate even the requirement for a pardon in order to be protected in trying to get one’s life back together. The Progressive Conservatives are leery of seeming even remotely hard-hearted nowadays, but surely their base is the mostly the same one Tim Hudak thought might appreciate forcing sweaty 40-hour work weeks on the province’s prisoners.

I’m of two minds on it. “You’ll hear people say, ‘Well, if you did something wrong, you have to deal with the consequences,’” says Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, acting executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. “But in our criminal justice system, the consequences (are) supposed to be the penalty.”

But surely the very availability of pardons — a discretionary post-penalty form of absolution — implies society does not view everyone as equal the moment they finish their sentences. Perhaps that requirement is an appropriate barrier to receive official protections for one’s employment rights. Or perhaps a time limit might be better. Either way, I would rather politicians put their intentions in writing than rely on the Human Rights Commission to interpret their intent. That tribunal in 2009 did a highly questionable job of it.